Mars Lander Project

NASA, via Associated Press

An artist's rendering of NASA's new Mars rover, Curiosity

Wouldn't it be cool to work on a project like this? One where there is a huge, complicated timeline that goes for years but punctuated with a few tight, second-by-second timelines where everything has to go exactly right. That's what I love about NASA projects. There are those tight timelines around launch and landing that must be planned meticulously with all sorts of back-up plans and contingencies in place to ensure that the billion-dollar investment isn't lost.

This Monday, NASA lands a new rover on Mars to explore the planet. The steps to slow the descent of the spaceship from 13,000 miles per hour to a soft landing have been dramatized in an awesome video called  'Seven minutes of terror. ' Click on the link above to view this video.

Let's hope this project is successful and doesn't have the problems of a previous NASA project where the difference between Metric and US units doomed an orbiter.